From comment to case study: Cycle India & Heal

Matthew from Cycle India left a comment on a recent post that read:

Just a quick message to say our charity found using Justgiving for our recent Cycle India event was very worthwhile. We raised around £100k for our small charity - www.heal.co.uk

We're now planning another event and will be recommending all cyclists to have a Justgiving page, and only take payments this way.

I was intrigued by this, so got in touch with Matthew to find out a bit more about what they did, and why it was successful.

What does your charity do?

We have a project called the HEAL’s Children Village, where we look after around 200 orphaned or under-privileged children. The children are around 5 – 16 years old and live in  one of 10 bungalows, each with its own ‘house mother’ who takes care of them.

We also fund the Poverty Trap Project which educates children in nearby villages who do have parents but they can’t afford to send their children to school.

We normally get £50k in a year, which can go a long way - everyone who works for the charity are volunteers so almost 99% of all donations gets spent on our projects and we want the money raised from the cycle 2010 event to go to new projects.

What is your event?

Our event is Cycle India, which in January 2008 raised £100K, mainly through Justgiving. We had 22 cyclists, plus some Americans and Indian people joined in. We're planning a new Cycle India 2010 now, for up to 30 cyclists.

Why did you decide to use Justgiving for your event?

I sponsored friends using the service and found it very easy and simple to use. I liked how each fundraising page described where the money was going and showed a personal message by the fundraiser.

 Was it successful and would you use it again?

We raised £25k from the Justgiving pages, so it was only about a quarter of overall revenue. However, we raised around £25k in T-Shirt sponsorship, and Prasad the Founder did a fantastic job on his own with contacts, which made up a big slice.

We also raised £5,500 from registration fees and did a few fundraising parties. So, as far as straight sponsorship it was probably around 50/50 this time. The fundraisers with a Justgiving page significantly raised more.  

[Jonathan's ears prick up...] That's interesting, can you say how much more people raised on Justgiving? Do you know what the percentage is?

I’ve checked through the figures and those that embraced Justgiving did better overall – roughly £1,000 more. But many of these used both methods, such as myself or Prasad  whilst many others, like Debbie, did really well too.

Thanks, what lessons have you learnt for the next event?

I raised around £6k myself and I think it was my ‘polite email reminders’ to friends that helped - including one saying ‘you are the only person who hasn’t sponsored me…’ and within the day everyone had sponsored me!

I will stress/encourage all cyclists to have their own personal page on Justgiving.

How will you be promoting the event and why should people enter?

I have written a blog specifically for it and will be posting all FAQs the cyclists may have so other people can use it to get information and leave comments, which I think will help the cyclists get to know each other before the event.

I'll also use the charity's website and every cyclists will have a link from their fundraising page on the blog, with a ‘top fundraisers’ list to promote competitiveness and motivate the donors.

Do you have any more comments?

Initially we (our treasurer and myself) were very concerned about the charges. But we found we were far better off using Justgiving as it was a very difficult task working out the exact amount of Gift Aid we could claim, and many donors had not left their addresses to claim the Gift Aid.

The treasurer was negative to begin with but is now convinced Justgiving is "the way to go", it’s so "easy" for them on an admin front and they "couldn’t fault the system".

So thanks Matthew for taking the time to fill us in on your experiences,  we hope the Cycle India event in 2010 is even more successful than this year!

And if anyone else has a great fundraising success story they'd like to share, leave a comment below or get in touch.

**Update** here's how the story is told on the Cycle India blog.